Foxtrot and Black Bear update, Red beer down and Curieux..

Check it:

The Red Beer, brewed with Timmay back in the very beginning of January, is down! Good beer, that. I just stuffed the mini keg of the Irritable Bear sour stout in it's place for carb'ing up for the May 2nd Big Brew we're having here.. Irritable Bear is the one gallon sour version, fermented with the Jolly Pumpkin 'Bam Bier' strain of yeast, of the ol' #79 Black Bear Belgian stout I brewed with Jody. Probably soon, I'll take that minikeg out of there and put the Black Bear stout itself in there.. for a bit of a tasting on the May 2nd fiesta. The Foxtrot IPA (109 IBU's!) was kegged yesterday as well, and that'll go online when the next keg goes off..

Tap #4 is hosting the 100% Brett 'C' beer I did way back as well.. and that's doing fine too, and I'm getting more of an appreciation for it now as time goes by. Had a fellow over yesterday (Vincent) who is a member of a rag-tag group of brewers in the Harwinton/Torrington area not affiliated with a club at this time, who I met through a Craigslist posting when he responded looking for some hops.. anyway, he popped in and had a taste of that and mentioned that he thought it tasted like a German Riesling wine.. which I thought was pretty curious and fairly accurate, when looked at in that light. Interesting.. more on this fellow and his crew (who brew on a 20 gallon+ system!) when more intel is gathered about them. So far, they operate under the radar like brewing ninja's..

Another friend came up a couple nights ago (Hi Colin and Dawn!) and brought this thing with him, Allagash Curieux, a bourbon barrel aged thing of 11% power. The oak is pretty restrained in this pale colored beer.. it's a hot one, though.. burns just a bit on the palate, but a 12oz glass is manageable solo. Bring a friend to finish this whole bottle, though.. a well done beer of some complexity, but no sour, which I was sort of expecting being that it's from Allagash and barrel aged. One would just expect it, no? Well, no. Hmm.

In sourdough news, I brought the culture back to life after a harrowing battle of a near sourdough death experience. The problem was solved with a small application of pulverized 2 row barley. Ingenious! Fired that sad stinkin' yeast beast up right quick. In the midst of the build up of the dough as we speak...

That is all for now. Carry on..